...and by older, I mean more: hey, we have families now. So ideally, these questions are for gamers who are hitting their 30s, 40s, and are likely raising kids, too. Or maybe they aren't.
- How have your priorities changed?
- How has this changed your gaming?
- How could brick and mortar stores change to be more "family gamer" or "older gamer" friendly? Yes, these can be two different groups!
- How should companies market to older/family gamers?
- How has your tabletop experience changed?
Some general questions that I'd like to throw out there. Also, it'd be a treat if we could hear from Paizo on the topic as I think they've done great! Is there a podcast on this someplace that I've missed?
Hey, there. Thanks for the reply. :) This is something I'm grappling with, myself.
With gamers who have kids, they've mentioned a few things:
- The importance of starting and finishing on time, as they're often working around a schedule
- If you host, the potential importance of your space being kid friendly
...and so on, that I wish I could recall at the moment.
It's also a fairly sizable group.
For example, this article by Forbes suggests that the mean age of what they're calling "core gamers" is around 30.
CNet suggests that the average is 37 years old. There are any number of articles on this 25+ group making their own groups online (2old2play is one I just read about).
I wonder if by making spaces more family-friendly, that we also make them more open to mixed age groups?
As a 38 year old dad I can say without qualification that I much preferred the countless hours of daily gaming that youth offered. It allowed a player and a campaign to progress at a snails pace. The journey was more important than the destination... With all the folks at our table being employed parents, such daily marathons are simply not possible.
That of course means that spending more than 24 hours at a particular level can be painstakingly slow. Aesthetically the leveling in our modern games need to run 7 times faster, since we play 1/7th as much. (once on the weekend)... Both fortunately and unfortunately It sure doesnt feel like we get to spend any significant amount of time marinading in a given level for very much time at all. This makes it feel a little videogamey to me, but by the same token I wouldnt want to spend 3 months without getting a level, like it might with the upper levels of my particular favorite system 2e...
Now that everyone in my area plays battlemat style anymore, I've had to join in on the most honorable new moneysink known to gaming, which is Minis.... With that in mind, one thing's for certain. The best thing a brick and mortar store can do is to be close to my area and stock up on inventory... If I hit the game store and it has maybe 20 or 30 sets of dice, there's 200 figures on the wall and they're all only for warhammer or warhammer 40k... i probably won't go back in. The store I go to that satisfies my fix is over 40 miles away, but I'll drive it because the wall of minis is LOADED and is 2 sides of a 30 foot long wall. Thats a lotta friggin minis. I'd easily go so far as to say their mini supply is comfortably in the multiples of thousands at any given moment.
And it would be super nice if I could find a gaming store where every table every day seven days a week isnt filled with people playing magic the gathering tournaments. I mean how many tournaments can you have in a month. With the variety of cards that are available and legal for tournament play, surely we are approaching the point where every possible statistical combination of decks has faced off against each other by now... Aren't we done with MTG yet? That would be nice...
Pardon me. I've got to take my grognard for a walk. He seems to be gettin fussy.